Journal of

Islamic
Philosophy

A Special Issue on
Mullā Ṣadrā

Volume 6, 2010
 © Copyright 2010, Journal of Islamic Philosophy, Inc.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Neither this journal nor any part thereof may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, scanning,
microfilming, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system
without the express written permission from the publisher.

ISSN: 1536-4569 – eISSN: 1536-4755

Printed in Canada, 2011

The editors would like to thank Mohammed Rustom for his dedication and
cooperation in putting together this special issue of the Journal; indeed the idea of
devoting an issue to Mullā Ṣadra was his and for this he is to be commended.
Journal of Islamic Philosophy / 2010

Editors
Macksood A. Atab
Muhammad I. Hozien
Valerie J. Turner

Editorial Board

Mustafa Mahmoud Abu Sway

Al-Quds University

Mashhad Al-Allaf
Petroleum Institute

Munawar Anees
John Templeton Foundation

Massimo Campanini
University of Milan

hérèse-Anne Druart
Catholic University of America

Majid Fakhry
Georgetown University

Ibrahim Kalin
Georgetown University

Richard C. Taylor
Marquette University
 Journal of Islamic Philosophy
Volume 6
2010
muslimphilosophy.com/journal

Contents

Editorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Mohammed Rustom

Hierarchies of Knowing in Mullā Ṣadrā’s

Commentary on the Uṣūl al-kāī . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Maria Massi Dakake

Mullā Ṣadrā’s Ontology Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

David B. Burrell

Mullā Ṣadrā’s imāma / walāya: An Aspect of

His Indebtedness to Ibn ʿArabī . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Shigeru Kamada

“Substantial Motion” and “New Creation” in

Comparative Context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Yanis Eshots

Mullā Ṣadrā’s Eschatology in al-Ḥikma al-ʿarshiyya . . . . . . 93

Zailan Moris

he Nature and Signiicance of Mullā Ṣadrā’s

Qurʾānic Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Mohammed Rustom
Book Reviews

Christian Jambet, he Act of Being:

he Philosophy of Revelation in Mullā Sadrā . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Sajjad Rizvi, Mullā Ṣadrā and Metaphysics:
Modulation of Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Ibrahim Kalin, Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy:
Mullā Ṣadrā on Existence, Intellect, and Intuition . . . . . . . 141
Reza Akbarian, he Fundamental Principles of
Mulla Sadra’s Transcendent Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

Contributors

David Burel is Professor of Ethics and Development at Uganda

Martyrs University.
Maria Massi Dakake is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at
George Mason University.
Yanis Eshots is Associate Professor of Islamic Philosophy and Persian
Literature at the University of Tallinn.
Shigeru Kamada is Professor of Oriental Culture at the Institute for
Advanced Studies on Asia at the University of Tokyo.
Zailan Moris is Associate Professor in the School of Humanities at
Universiti Sains Malaysia.
Mohammed Rustom is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at
Carleton University.
 “Substantial Motion” and “New Creation” in
Comparative Context

Yanis Eshots

O ne of the earliest deinitions of motion in Islamic philosophy

belongs to al-Kindī: “Motion is a change of the state of the
essence” (al-ḥaraka tabaddul ḥāl al-dhāt).1 his deinition,
however, provokes more questions than it answers. What exactly is
‘state’? Does the change of state necessitate the change of essence?
If yes, in which way?
he problem of motion received a more substantial treatment
in the works of Ibn Sīnā, who wrote in the Najāt: “[he word]
‘motion’ is employed to describe (1) a gradual change of a stable
state in the body, in such a manner that through this change the
body directs itself towards something and (2) the arrival through
this change at this thing.”2
He adds that motion must manifest itself as leaving the previous
state and that this state must be capable of decreasing and increasing,
because that from which the body gradually emerges, as it directs
itself toward something [diferent], remains, in such a way that
its remaining does not contradict [the body’s] emergence from
it—otherwise, this emergence would be an instantaneous afair, not
a gradual one. hen, Ibn Sīnā continues, the state of such a body
is either similar in every moment of this emergence, or not. But it
cannot be similar, because, if it had been similar, then its emergence
would not have occurred, since everything, the emergence of which
occurs gradually, remains, without being similar in itself in respect of
its state, during its emergence from this state. Such a thing, inevitably,
allows increase and decrease.
Among the states that experience motion Ibn Sīnā names white-
ness and blackness, heat and cold, length and shortness, nearness and

1 al-Kindī, Rasāʾīl, part 1, 196, quoted from Roger Arnaldez, “Ḥaraka wa sukūn,”
EI2, 3:169b.
2 Ibn Sīnā, al-Najāt min al-gharq ī baḥr al-ḍalālāt, ed. M. T. Dāneshpazhūh
(Tehran: Tehran University Press, 1379Sh), 203.

Journal of Islamic Philosophy 6 (2010): 79–92.

© 2010 by the Journal of Islamic Philosophy, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1536-4569
80 Yanis Eshots

distance, greatness and smallness in volume.3 Following Aristotle,

he describes motion as act (iʿl) and the irst perfection of the thing
in potentiality, in that aspect in which it is in potentiality: “Motion
is what is conceived from the state of the body, due to its gradual
coming out of stable form (hayʾa), and it is coming out of potentiality
into actuality in a continuous manner, not instantaneously.”4
As is well known, Aristotle and Ibn Sīnā limited motion to
four of ten categories—namely to place (or “where”) (πoύ/ ʿayn),
position (κείσθαι/ waḍʿ), quality (πoιόν/ kayf), and quantity (πoσoν/
kamm).5 Regarding substance (oύσία/ jawhar), Ibn Sīnā’s view was
that it does not experience motion. Although engendering (kawn)
and corruption (fasād) of substance outwardly resemble motion,
in fact they cannot be regarded as such, because, according to Ibn
Sīnā, they occur instantaneously, not gradually.6
In the philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā, the (existence of) substantial
motion is an undeniable and self-evident truth (the veracity of which
Ṣadrā demonstrates in many ways). Perhaps only the principle of the
analogical gradation of existence (tashkīk al-wujūd) can be regarded
as more signiicant and entailing more important consequences than
the principle of substantial motion (but, in fact, both are intertwined
and inseparable from each other). In order to understand what Ṣadrā
meant by “substantial motion” and why he was so irmly convinced
of its existence, we need to examine his concept of motion irst,
inding out how it difers from that of Ibn Sīnā.
Ṣadrā describes motion as “a lowing state, whose existence
is between pure potentiality and pure act and whose concomitant
is a inite gradual continuous afair which has no existence that
is described with presence and all-comprehensiveness (jamʿiyya)
elsewhere except in the estimative faculty (wahm).”7 his deinition,
in fact, represents a combination of two Avicennan deinitions of
motion, each of which deals with the latter in a diferent aspect. In the
irst deinition, Ibn Sīnā describes motion as “a continuous intelligible

3 Ibid., 203–204.
4 Ibid., 208.
5 See Ibid., 204–208.
6 See Ibid., 205.
7 Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliyya ī l-asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa,
9 vols., ed. R. Luṭī, I. Amīnī, and F. Ummīd (Beirūt: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth
al-ʿArabī, 1981), part 3, 59.
 JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY / 2010 81

afair of the object, moving from the place of the beginning [of the
movement] to the place of its end.”8 his deinition deals with the
continuous (qaṭʿiyya) movement, which exists only in our mind
(dhihn) or estimative faculty (wahm), but is not found in the outside,
“among the entities” (ī l-aʿyān). Notice that Ṣadrā treats it as the
concomitant of the real motion that exists in the outer world.
he second deinition describes motion as
an existential afair [that exists] in the outside and which
consists in the body’s being in an intermediate position
between the place of the beginning [of its movement]
and the place of its end, so that, whichever point between
these two is taken, its [the body’s]“before” and “ater” is
not in it [the supposed point]. his state lasts as long as
the thing continues to be moving.9
This is the definition of the “instantaneous movement”
(al-ḥaraka al-tawassuṭiyya), i.e., the movement as it is perceived
by our sense faculties. Ṣadrā describes it as a “lowing state” (ḥāla
sayyāla) between potentiality and actuality. Despite his criticisms
of the above quoted Avicennan deinitions10 (which result from
Ṣadrā’s extreme existentialist position and his denying any reality
to quiddity), one cannot fail to notice that he develops his teaching
on movement on the basis of Ibn Sīnā’s doctrine. In other words,
Ṣadrā treats an instantaneous movement, understood as a lowing
afair, as a reality that exists in the outside, while he views the
continuous one as a concomitant of the former, which exists only
in the estimative faculty—i.e., he sees the continuous movement as
a shadow of the instantaneous one.
However, if we consider movement as the mobility of a thing
(mutaḥarrikkiyyat al-shayʾ), it is nothing but self-renewal (tajaddud)
and passing (inqiḍāʾ). Its proximate cause (al-ʿilla al-qarība), by
necessity, must also be an afair which is not stable in its essence—
otherwise, the parts of movement would not become non-existent.
Or perhaps it is more appropriate to say that motion is an essential
concomitant of the existence of this afair, which is ixed in its

8 Ibn Sīnā, Shifā: Jadal, ed. F. El-Ahwānī (Cairo: GEBO, 1965), quoted from
Ṣadrā, Asfār, part 3, 31.
9 Ibid., 32.
10 Ibid., 32–37.
82 Yanis Eshots

quiddity and self-renewing in its existence—and, if it is so, it is

more suitable to focus our attention on the accompanied (malzūm),
not on the accompanying (lāzim). he accompanied afair, whose
concomitant is motion, is, of course, nature (ṭabīʿa).
he proximate cause of every species of motion is nature, and it
is the substance which constitutes the body and through which the
body is actualized as a species, and it [and not motion] is the irst
perfection of the natural body in the aspect of its actual existence.
Hence, it is established and veriied that every body is an afair
which is self-renewing in its existence and lowing in its ipseity
(huwiyya), although it is ixed in its quiddity, and through this, it
difers from motion, because the meaning of the latter is self-renewal
and passing.11
In other words, there is no such a thing as a stable body, as far
as existence is considered. On the contrary, every body should be
considered as a particular aspect of the low of existence—an aspect
whose apparent stability results from an error of our sense perception.
Motion is not external to such a body and is not predicated to it
from outside. Rather, this is a certain quiddity which is predicated
on this or that aspect or level of existence.
he principles of Peripatetic philosophy require an unchanging
substratum for every change. In Ṣadrian philosophy, in which the
body is viewed as an existentially self-renewing and perpetually
lowing afair, it apparently cannot serve as such substratum. Ṣadrā
solves the arising diiculty by stating that the requirement for the
stability of the substratum applies only to those motions which are
not existential concomitants of nature (for example, passage from one
place to another, transmutation, and growth). As Ṭabāṭabāʾī remarks
in his gloss, this assertion, in fact, testiies that Ṣadrā believes that
all categories move through the movement of the substance which
is their substratum. Ṭabāṭabāʾī also notes that non-concomitant
movements, which occur in the categories of place, position, quality,
and quantity, do not rely on the nature of the moving substance as
such, but, nevertheless, the furthest limits of these non-concomitant
movements are the concomitant ones that directly depend on the
nature of their substratum.12

11 Ibid., 62.
12 See Ibid., 62n2.
 JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY / 2010 83

Another diiculty concerning the substratum of movement

lies in the fact that, according to Aristotle and Ibn Sīnā, it consists
of something potential and something actual. Ṣadrā’s answer to
them is that the postulate of the existence of two diferent afairs,
one of which is potential and another actual, is a product of mental
analysis (taḥlīl ʿaqlī), while in reality the potential and the actual
is one and the same thing and belongs to one existential direction.
he ixity (thubūt) of movement manifests itself as its self-renewal,
and, likewise, the ixity of that through which movement occurs,
that is, nature which is engendered in the bodies, manifests itself as
its essential self-renewal. But what is the mechanism of this ixity
and self-renewal? According to Ṣadrā, it is based on the possibility
of preparedness (imkān istiʿdādī), and the self-renewal of nature
manifests itself as “dressing ater dressing” (al-labs baʿd al-labs).
As Fazlur Rahman justly remarks, the self-renewal is perceived by
Ṣadrā as an “essentially evolutionary and unidirectional individual
process-entity.”13
To understand this properly, we must keep in mind that the
reality of prime matter is nothing other than potentiality and pre-
paredness, while the reality of form is nature with its self-renewing
temporal origination. hrough its evolving preparedness, the prime
matter receives a new form in every instant, each form having a
diferent matter, which accompanies it by necessity. In turn, this
matter is prepared to receive another form, diferent from that
which necessitated it (matter) through preparedness. hus we ind
that form is prior to matter in essence, but its (the form’s) individual
ipseity is posterior to matter in time. Hence, both form and matter
possess self-renewal and perpetuity through the other. he popular
belief that the form of a non-compound body remains forever the
same and does not undergo any change arises from the similarity
of the changing forms. In actual fact, however, these forms are one
by their philosophical deinition (ḥadd) and meaning, but they are
not one in number, because they are renewed and replaced with
each other in every instant, in a continuous manner.14 his made
Ṭabāṭabāʾī conclude that Ṣadrā saw existence as a single continu-
ous lowing afair, from which hypothetical limitations (i.e., the
13 Fazlur Rahman, he Philosophy of Mullā Sadrā (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1975), 100.
14 See Ṣadrā, Asfār, part 3, 63–64.
84 Yanis Eshots

intelligible quiddities—e.g., those of man, animal, plant, etc.) are

abstracted by the mind.15
here is a single continuous (or: uninterrupted) individual
existence, which has ininite limitations in potential in respect to
instants, hypothesized in its time, and [therefore,] in it exist an
ininite number of species—in potentia and in meaning, not in actu
and in [actual] existence.16
he diiculty with the apparent lack of an unchanging and
persisting substratum (mawḍūʿ) in substantial motion to which Ibn
Sīnā pointed, is easily resolved if we agree to treat substance not as
a static afair, but as a dynamic one and as an individual process.17
Although it is necessary that the substratum of every movement
subsist through its existence and individuation, in the individua-
tion of a corporeal substratum, it is suicient that there is matter
which is individuated through the existence of some [sort of] form,
quality, and quantity, and it [matter] can change in respect to the
particularities of each of them [i.e., form, quiddity, and quantity].18
In other words, the subsistence of the substratum is achieved
through the existence of matter and some indeterminate form, quality,
and quantity. As Fazlur Rahman observes, this indeterminate form,
quality, and quantity behave vis-à-vis the progressively emerging
ininity of determinate forms, qualities, and quantities “as a genus
does vis-à-vis concrete species.”19 Hence, the persisting substratum
is an unbound/non-delimited body (jism muṭlaq), i.e., a body-
in-general, not a particular body, while the unity of the moving
substance is one of the process-entity or the event-structure.20
On the other hand, as Ṭabāṭabāʾī remarks, if the movement lacks
the unity of continuity, the subsistence of substratum alone does not
provide the unity of movement. Moreover, according to Ṭabāṭabāʾī,
while the subsistence of substratum is a necessary precondition of the
accidental movements (such as the movements in quality, quantity,
position, and place), because they are accidents, whose existence is
only possible in substratum and whose individuation takes place

15 See Ibid., 64n2.

16 Ibid., 86.
17 See Rahman, Philosophy, 100.
18 Ṣadrā, Asfār, part 3, 87–88.
19 Rahman, Philosophy, 100.
20 See Ṣadrā, Asfār, part 3, 92–93 and Rahman, Philosophy, 100–101.
 JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY / 2010 85

through it, this is not the case with the material substance, which
exists through itself and, in its individual unity, does not require
anything else apart from its own existence, which is simultaneously
its individuation.
he material substance, says Ṭabāṭābāʾī, insofar as it is con-
sidered the possessor of substantial motion, is both the movement
and the moving one, because its selhood, which is movement, is
attributed to its selhood which is substance. In sum, accidental
movements in respect of their unity and individuality require a
substantial substratum, a possessor of unity and individuality, as
a root and basis of their lowing unity and individuality.21 While
accidents need substance as their substratum and cannot exist
without it, the substance in a substratum has no need for other than
itself. Since Ṣadrā views every corporeal and psychic substance as
an evolutionary and unidirectional process, its actual substratum
is nothing other than the continuity of this process.22
Does Ṣadrā’s theory of substantial motion, as gradual and
evolutionary unidirectional movement toward perfection, constitute
a revolutionary new teaching in the context of Islamic philosophy?
By no means—the idea, probably stemming from the Neoplatonic
concepts of processio and reditus, found its expression in the well-
known teaching of scala naturae, which was equally popular in
medieval Europe and the medieval Muslim East.23 he uninterrupted
chain of being, which ascends from the lowest and simplest to the
highest and most complex creatures, was viewed as the product
of gradual emanation and natural growth of things in perfection.
Among the irst Muslim philosophers to discuss the issue in their
treatises in detail were the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (Brethren of Purity).
hus, they wrote:
Know, O brother, that the sublunary beings begin from
the most imperfect and lowest states and then ascend
towards the most perfect and eminent state. his occurs
with the passage of time and with every instant, since
their nature does not receive the emanation from the

21 See Ṣadrā, Asfār, part 3, 87n1.

22 See Rahman, Philosophy, 100.
23 On scala naturae, see A. Lovejoy, he Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, MA:
Cambridge University Press, 1936).
86 Yanis Eshots

spherical forms at one single time, but gradually, one

thing ater another.24
Ṣadrā’s merit lies in discussing this Neoplatonic theory in terms
of Peripatetic philosophy and in overcoming the resistance of the
latter by interpreting material substance as a continuous low and
evolutionary process, instead of viewing it as a static and unchange-
able entity. While the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ focused their attention on the
universal chain of being, Ṣadrā’s main concern was with a particular
corporeal or psychic substance. It was not mineral becoming plant
and plant developing into animal that concerned Ṣadrā, but body
becoming soul and soul becoming intellect, this world growing
into the other (the hereater) and the transformation of the irst
(corporeal) coniguration (al-nashʾa al-ūlā) into the other (spiritual)
one (al-nashʾa al-ukhra). his is primarily an eschatological concern:
this-worldly life, events, phenomena are regarded by Ṣadrā as (a)
preparatory stage(s) and shadow(s) of the other-worldly one(s).
In the world of nature all substances are subject to substantial
motion, because the existence of a material substance, regardless
of the corruptibility (in the case of elemental bodies) or the incor-
ruptibility (in the case of celestial bodies) of its matter, can only
be envisaged as an unidirectional evolutionary process—or, more
precisely, in respect to its existence, every material substance is
an individualized unidirectional evolutionary process. During its
development, this substance becomes subject to an ininite number
of changes and alterations—“dressing ater dressing,” which means
that, in order to assume a new and higher form, it does not need to
take of the previous lower one (e.g., in order to assume the form of
the animal soul, the substance does not need to abandon and take
of the form of the vegetative soul). Quite the opposite, in order to
be able to receive a higher form, the substance must irst receive
the lower one (thus, in order to be able to receive the form of the
animal soul, the respective substance must irst receive that of the
vegetative soul). Ṣadrā calls this rule (the principle of) “the lower

24 Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, Rasāʾīl, 4 vols. (Beirūt: Dār al-Ṣādir, 1957), 2:183, quoted from
D. De Smet, “he Sacredness of Nature in Shi’i Isma‘ili Islam,” in he Book
of Nature in Antiquity and Middle Ages, ed. K. van Berkel and A. Vanderjagt
(Louvain: Peeters, 2005), 87n8. Cf. also Y. Marquet’s French translation, “La
determination astrale de l’ evolution selon les Freres de la Purete,” Bulletin
d’Etudes Orientales 44 (1992), 129.
 JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY / 2010 87

possibility” (al-imkān al-akhaṣṣ) (which is to be understood as the

necessity to previously actualize the lower possibility in order to
allow the actualization of the higher one) and, in the ascending
arc of being, places it opposite the well-known Peripatetic rule of
“the higher possibility” (al-imkān al-ashraf), according to which
the actualization of the lower possibility is only possible through
and ater the actualization of the higher one in the descending arc.
More importantly, the existence of the natural body is only possible
and can only be conceived of as substantial motion and stability in
low. he particular evolutionary path taken by a certain aspect of
the low of material existence (thought of in terms of substantial
motion) is determined by its particular principle, referred to as its
“nature” (ṭabīʿa). his particular principle or nature of the body is,
in fact, nothing but tenuity (raqīqa) that links the reality (ḥaqīqa) or
immaterial archetype of the thing with its material idols. Although
nature is the proximate cause of substantial motion, the ultimate
goal of the latter is to bring the substance out of the world of nature,
and place it among the inhabitants of the world of command, that
is, increase the intensity of its existence to a level suicient to make
it possible for it to exist as pure disengaged dominating light (nūr
mujarrad qāhir), or Intellect.
Ṣadrā’s theory of substantial motion can now be compared
with Ibn ʿArabī’s teaching on new creation (khalq jadīd). During
the twentieth century it became almost commonplace for experts
in Islamic philosophy to believe that Ṣadrā’s theory represents
nothing other than a philosophical demonstration of Ibn ʿArabī’s
teaching on new creation. (Ṣadrā himself was partially responsible
for the spread and strengthening of the belief, since in his discourses
on substantial motion he employed the expression khalq jadīd a
number of times).25 Here, I ask, is it really so? Or is Ṣadrā’s usage
of the aforementioned Qurʾānic and Sui term merely a rhetorical
technique, designed to capture the attention of the audience and to
intrigue them? Before I try to answer these questions, I irst briely
examine the concept of new creation and its history.
As Ibn ʿArabī himself acknowledges, his idea of the perpetual
renewal of creation was, at least partially, inspired by the Ashʿarī
teaching on substances and accidents. As is well known, the Ashʿarī

25 See, for example, Ṣadrā, Asrār, 63, 86.

88 Yanis Eshots

believed that the world consists of immutable substances and ever

changing accidents. heir famous axiom was “accidents do not
remain for two moments” (al-aʿrāḍ lā tabqā zamānayn). While the
Ashʿarī viewed substance as the underlying substratum of accidents,
they held that the substances of which the world consists have no
independent existence in themselves, but wholly depend on God’s
power, which continually recreates the world in every instant (need-
less to say, such an understanding of substance (jawhar) makes it
practically synonymous with atoms (al-jawhar al-fard, literally—“an
indivisible particle”).26 In the twelth chapter of the Fuṣūṣ, which
contains one of the most important discussions on khalq jadīd,
Ibn ʿArabī admits that two groups—the Ashʿarī and the Relativists
(ḥisbāniyya)—in their reasoning approach an understanding of the
mystery of perpetual creation, but, he states, both fail to penetrate its
heart and core. As for the Ashʿarī, they have grasped the perpetual
renewal of some of the existents, namely the accidents, but they have
not realized that the world in its entirety represents nothing other
than the totality (majmūʿ) of accidents, for which reason it entirely
changes in every moment. In turn, the Relativists apprehend that
the world perpetually changes in its entirety, but fail to notice the
oneness of the entity of the substance which receives the form of
the world and which only exists through it (whereas the form also
cannot be conceived other than through this substance).27
Importantly, in this discussion Ibn ʿArabī deines the new
creation as the “self-renewal of the afair with every breath” (tajdīd
al-amr maʿa al-anfās),28 which (self-renewal) is necessitated by the
fact that “God manifests Himself [anew] in every breath”29 and
“a [particular] self-disclosure is never repeated.”30 (However, Ibn
ʿArabī’s commentator Muʾayyad al-Dīn al-Jandī remarks that God’s
essential self-disclosure is one and eternal, and, if considered without
any relation, never changes in any way. he perpetual change and
alteration of the self-disclosures of the Real witnessed by (certain

26 See S. van den Bergh, “Dhawhar,” EI2, 2:493a.

27 See Ibn al-ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ, 125.
28 Ibid., 125.
29 Ibid., 126.
30 Ibid.
 JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY / 2010 89

strata of) mystics are occasioned by the change of the preparedness

of the receptacles).31
One notices that each a new creation is necessitated by and
depends on a new breath. hese breaths represent fragments or
instances of the all-encompassing Breath of the Merciful (nafas
al-Raḥmān). It seems not unreasonable to assume that perpetual
origination, in a way, results from the fragmentation of the Breath
of the Merciful in respect to its particular receptacles, which, due to
their limitations and diference in preparedness, cannot receive this
all-encompassing breath in its entirety at one time, but are only able
to do this gradually, dividing it in diferent directions and aspects
according to the division that exists between God’s names. Hence,
in the same way as no human being, due to the narrowness of his
breast, can partake of the Breath of the Merciful, except through a
series of subsequent breaths, our mystical intuition cannot conceive
of creation other than as an (ininite) chain of self-disclosures, every
link of which simultaneously marks the appearance of a new form
and the disappearance of the previous one. hus, the teaching of new
creation in Ibn ʿArabī’s thought deals mainly with the relationship
between the limited existence and the unlimited one.
Due to its coninement in time and space, the material universe
is also conined in meaning—or probably the actual case is vice versa:
its limitation in meaning manifests itself as spatial and temporal
limitation(s). he narrowness of the receptacle, thus, makes the act
of the Real actualized gradually, step by step, instant ater instant
(breath ater breath), creation ater creation. (Ṣadrā would certainly
say that this narrowness and coninement results from the weak-
ness / lowness of the intensity of the natural existence—or that at
its lower degrees of intensity existence manifests itself as natural,
i.e., as an existence that is conined in time and space and cannot
simultaneously assume more than one particular form.)
A number of passages found in the Futūḥāt testify that the
perpetual new creation of the world is necessitated by the narrow-
ness of the receptacle. However, to Ibn ʿArabī, this receptacle is
existence (=inding) itself:

31 See Muʾayyad al-Dīn al-Jandī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, ed. S. J. Āshtiyānī (Qum:
Būstān-i Kitāb 1381Sh), 494–495.
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Within the Treasuries are found the individuals of genera.

hese individuals are ininite, and that which is ininite
does not enter into existence, since everything conined
by existence is inite.32
he possible things are ininite, and there cannot be
more than the ininite. But the ininite does not enter
into existence at once (daf ʿatan); rather it enters little
by little, without an end.33
But, upon a more careful examination of the above quotations,
one realizes that what the Greatest Shaykh understands here by
existence is the external and natural existence.
Furthermore, one notices that, to Ibn ʿArabī, new creation is
not a unidirectional and evolutionary process—i.e., the subsequent
form is not necessarily more perfect in any aspect than the previ-
ous one. Also, in new creation, through assuming a new form, the
(material) existence unclothes itself of the earlier one, whereby the
process must be described as “dressing ater undressing” (al-labs
baʿd al-khalʿ), not as “dressing ater dressing” (al-labs baʿd al-labs),
as is the case with substantial motion. Ibn ʿArabī is overwhelmed by
the vision of the perpetual renewal of the world, which can probably
be characterized as the attempt of the inite to grasp the ininite and
the attempt of the limited to grip the unlimited—a task that can
never be completed. Ṣadrā, in turn, envisages the material world as
a lowing substance which, in every part and every instant, moves
one—albeit an immeasurably small—step closer toward spirituality
and perfection.
he new creation, as it is understood by Ibn ʿArabī, i.e., the
limited’s attempt to express and manifest the unlimited, takes place in
keeping with a certain regular pattern (likeness is normally replaced
with likeness, not opposite with opposite) that is cyclically repeated
and recreated. For this reason, it can be described as a cyclical event
and presented graphically as circular motion.
In turn, substantial motion as envisaged by Ṣadrā, i.e., as a
unidirectional evolutionary process and gradual spiritualization of
32 Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya (Beirūt: Dār al-Ṣādir, n.d.), part 3, 361,
quoted from William C. Chittick, he Sui Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s
Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989),
96.
33 Ibid.
 JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY / 2010 91

material existence, occurs due to the increase of the latter’s inten-

sity, can be graphically presented as a half of the circle, i.e., as its
ascending arc. What happens to the moving substance once it has
reached the summit of the arc? According to Ṣadrā, it remains with
the Godhead, becoming existentially one with its noetic archetype
(the respective dominating light).
his diference in approaches results from a more principal
diference between the visions of the two thinkers. For Ibn ʿArabī,
existence is an accident of the entity, eternally ixed in the knowledge
of the Real, the presence or absence of which does not in any way
change the quiddity/whatness of the respective entity and its status
in God’s mind; to Ṣadrā, there is no such thing as an externally
non-existent entity, eternally present in God’s mind. Rather, the
existence is the only thing which is/exists, whereas quiddities are
nothing other than its potential limitations, which do not really exist,
but are abstracted by the mind from the perpetual low of (one and
the same) existence and its diferent aspects.
he substantial motion, in brief, comes down to the increase
of the intensity of the thing’s (i.e., the essence’s) existence. hat is
to say, an afair (e.g., the human soul), which begins to exist as
an entirely corporeal thing, gradually comes to experience, irst,
imaginalization (takhayyul) and, subsequently, intellectualization
(taʿaqqul). Although Ibn ʿArabī’s teaching on the “new creation”
(as numerous references to the latter, found in Ṣadrā’s works, seem
to suggest) is likely to have been one of the principal sources of
Ṣadrā’s inspiration for proposing the theory of substantial motion,
he appears to have missed the focal point of Ibn ʿArabī’s doctrine.
Ibn ʿArabī deines the “new creation” (or: “new measuring out”)
(khalq jadīd) as “the renewal of the afair with every breath” (tajdīd
al-amr maʿa l-anfās)34 or “the change of the world with every breath
[occurring] in one entity.”35 his renewal or change results from
the diference of the relations of wujūd in respect to each pos-
sible thing in every instant36 and is based on the mystical intuition
that perceives the world (cosmos, ʿālam) as the Real’s imagination
(khayāl). hough Ibn ʿArabī sometimes refers to the process of new
34 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ, part 1, 125.
35 Ibid.
36 See ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Kāshānī, Iṣṭilāḥat al-ṣūiyya, ed. M. Hādīzāde (Tehrān:
Intishārāt-i Ḥikmat 1381Sh), 133.
92 Yanis Eshots

creation (as perceived by a particular mystic) as taraqqī (‘advancing,

developing’),37 this advancing is not to be interpreted as advancing
toward and achieving a certain inal and ultimate perfection, e.g.,
a child becoming adult or a minor clerk’s becoming the director
of a company. Rather, this is an imaginal advancing—the kind of
advancing that we experience in dreams (and, therefore, it is called
by Ibn ʿArabī taraqqī baʿd al-mawt, ‘advancing ater the death’),38 and
is not unlike the Real’s advancing from task to task.39
Ṣadrā’s “substantial motion,” in turn, is a inite unidirectional
evolutionary afair. Upon attaining the desired perfection (be it
physical or psychic—as we know, according to Ṣadrā, there is no
ḥaraka jawhariyya in the world of intellect, because intellect is a
fully perfected soul), it ceases. herefore, substantial motion (also
referred to by Ṣadrā as the increase of the intensity (“strengthening”)
of the thing’s existence (tashdīd al-wujūd) must be understood as
the gradual return of the instance to its archetype (lord of species).
he expressions ḥaraka jawhariyya, tashdīd al-wujūd, and tajawhur
(‘substantialization’), thus, are all used by Ṣadrā to describe the
process of the thing’s gradual return to its root and principle (aṣl).
Both concepts—“new creation” and “substantial motion”—are
employed by their creators to describe certain journeys toward
perfection. However, in each case, this journey appears to be of
an entirely diferent character. While Ibn ʿArabī has in mind an
ininite journey in the realm of (the cosmic) imagination, Ṣadrā is
concerned with the inite journey of a physical and psychic instance
to its intelligible archetype.

37 e.g., Ibn al-ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ, part 1, 124.

38 Ibid.
39 According to the Qurʾān, every day He (i.e., God) is upon a [diferent] task
(55:29).